On Tuesday, a subcommittee was held regarding a large bill changing teen driving privileges in Iowa. The bill doesn’t do much to expand what is already on the books and scales back some privileges.
While the bill advanced to full committee, it was interesting to hear the testimony of the Blank Children’s Hospital lobbyist. Blank Children’s Hospital is part of UnityPoint Health. UnityPoint Health also has LGBTQ+ clinics offering “individual care” for transgender individuals. It has a few clinics listed on One Iowa’s list of LGBTQ “affirming” organizations.
In fact, when the Iowa House Government Oversight Committee held a hearing on sex-change treatments for minors in Iowa, it was UnityPoint Health’s chief medical officer who was one of just two doctors to testify — Dr. Dave Williams.
Last year, Senate File 538 protected kids from radical, experimental sex-change treatments and surgeries in Iowa. But the lobbyist for Blank Children’s Hospital, a person called Chaney Yeast, didn’t register on the bill. Yeast wasn’t supportive, opposed or undecided. Apparently, Blank Children’s Hospital had no opinion on whether a minor boy or a minor girl should be allowed to change sexes as a minor.
But Yeast did have an opinion on whether 14- and 15-year-olds should be driving on Iowa roads to school or work.
Yeast said Blank Children’s Hospital isn’t against those teenagers working, but said research should guide lawmakers in weighing the benefits and risks for safety versus convenience of parents.
“If you don’t pass this, 14- and 15-year-olds are still able to work,” Yeast said. “There’s just more of a burden on families to have to figure out how to get the kids there. But we feel that the risks far outweigh the benefits of that burden.
“Fourteen and fifteen-year-olds have awful driving records. Right? We really should call it a practice license because they’re just learning how to navigate the different situations that they encounter.”
Yeast then acknowledged the prefrontal cortex isn’t “fully developed.”
“So we know that they have a higher risk of accidents than even 16-year-olds do,” Yeast said.
Teenagers have three times the rate of fatal accidents as drivers in their 20s, she added.
“The research tells us there is a difference in the capability of teen drivers,” she said. “They are a greater risk not only to themselves but to others on the road.”
It is interesting testimony from an organization that couldn’t be bothered to show concern for the safety of kids last year when legislators were protecting them from doctors and healthcare providers willing to perform radical, experimental, irreversible sex-change treatments and surgeries on those same kids.
And it is interesting to hear Yeast express concern over the brain development of 14- and 15-year-olds. It’s too bad that the same concern wasn’t expressed last year when there was a debate on whether underage boys should be allowed to become girls and vice versa.
Maybe the concerns over this bill wouldn’t ring so hollow if she had.
